The caliphate arrives

Still Iraq’s internal problem?

Of course, the Americans will continue to deny that their war in Iraq, which shattered its security and political infrastructure and allowed al Qaeda hordes into the country, had anything to do with the ISIS comeback, and now their caliphate. Talk to that other main protagonist of the war, Tony Blair, and he will still shamelessly go on about how ridding Iraq of Saddam was the right thing to do, even in hindsight. No wonder the world’s financial and political lords saw fit to anoint him the special Middle East envoy. Al Qaeda might have been happy, if no one else.

But ISIS’s return-of-the-caliphate, whosever fault, is an extremely important development. First, it took a reactionary militia effectively still subscribing to eight century ideals to finally rubbish the Sykes-Picot arrangement, which had endured for almost a whole century. Then, the sectarian discontent that the American invasion had unleashed initially found few supporters beyond the Anbar region. But when frustrations continued unaddressed, and the occupying military not even slightly prepared for the guerilla war nightmare that was to come, the sunni population had little problems funneling hardliners that were willing to protect them, and take on the new shi’a majority regime if that was what it meant.

The American adventure in Libya didn’t help, where Nato air strength openly partnered with Saudi sponsored AQ groups on the ground, and few in the international media could find faults with an operation aimed at removing the “mad dog of the Middle East”. They would have tried again in Syria when the Spring reached there, but for Iranian and especially Russian resistance. And since then we’ve had some very public and confirmed instances of ISIS, AQ, Jabhat al Nusra, etc, unleashing a savage war on sectarian minorities, especially shi’a, in the name of Islam.

And it is only just coming to the world’s attention that Saudi petrodollars, if not controlled, will turn much more of the world into battlefields for extreme salafi superiority. But controlling ISIS’s advances will come first, which is where more novelties await the region. Perhaps we’ll see America partner with Iran. Perhaps they’ll even listen more to Moscow on Syria. Then, they must turn attention to Riyadh.